The Subject: C21-0
by Ollene myile
Summary: After a deep, ten-year-long sleep, Rukia awakens in the C21-0, a strange modern hospital. He had saved her, that berry-headed doctor, in more ways than one. But the C21-0 is a place of lies and deceit, of strange findings and new love. Will Rukia and Ichigo make it out alive? AU.
1. Chapter 1: Waking Up To a Dream

_The Subject: C21-0_

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**Chapter One: Waking Up to a Dream**

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_"Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind." _

_-Robert Louis Stevenson_

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The air is dry and medical, and it burns her throat to black crisps. The delicate insides of her nose blister as she tries to suck in a deep breath, with nothing but the clenching feeling of old air inside them. There's something cold and hard and plastic running through her nostrils and down her esophagus, and the feeling would have made her sick if she could focus on anything but the pain shooting through her lungs. She reaches up with shaking fingers to rip the plastic out; gagging her as it passes the uvula. She lets the tube of plastic fall by her side. As she opens her violet eyes, blackness is what welcomes her. Gasping harder and harder for precious air like a fish out of water, the girl clutches the sheets situated carefully under her body, crumpling it up in her pale, delicate hands. When the burning sensation in her throat strengthens, she really starts to panic.

Her throat constricts with the pressure of a strangled scream. Thoughts burst through her mind as an animalistic will to fight for her life overcomes her.

_I'm suffocating. Who buried me alive. What did I do to deserve it._

She pries her fingers off of the sheet to grab her esophagus, clawing at it. She barely notices the pain because all she needs is oxygen.

_Why can't I __**breathe**__?_

Desperate, she stretches her thin arms high up into the sky, where her hands connect with something stiff, hard, and cold. More plastic? She pounds on the hard surface, trying to replace the noise her tongue could not configure. Her chest heaves, but her lungs are empty. She's about to give up when she hears murmurs outside her apparent grave. Shouting, too. The voices are muffled, she but can make out a few words.

"Dammit, open it, _now!_"

The voice is dark, and husky with anger. The thought that somebody is trying to dig her out of the grave comforts the small girl. At least someone was trying. She continues to calm herself by listening to the beating of her heart. It's getting slower, and slower, with every breath she could not take in.

There's a loud crashing sound and it takes the girl a minute to realize that the one making the noise is her, still banging on the plastic-feeling material above her head in deranged panic.

There's one final stream of blasphemies coming from the voice outside, and then her ears pick up a beeping noise –soft, but intelligible. To her relief, the grave fills with air. She gasps and breathes in deeply, not pausing to release until her lungs are completely full. Then she lets the air out of her lungs quickly and does it again. It's heavenly. She knows that she will never again disrespect such a simple thing as air. But who has done this? Who has reached her beyond the grave?

Suddenly, she is blinded by an abrupt light that saturates her eyes. She blinks rapidly, trying to focus on the silhouettes that peer over her. Three heads. A spiky one, a slim, oval-shaped one, and one with long-flowing hair. The spiky-headed silhouette, with an agitated sigh, leaves abruptly.

"Dr. Ichimaru, look!" A perky lady with long auburn hair pulled up into a bun bobs up into the girl's line of vision. The woman reminds her of a pixie, with her big gray eyes and button nose. Her voice is high-pitched, and not very soothing, not like the other voice she heard earlier.

When her violet eyes finally focus, another face appears. Light, pale, and pretty for a man. All she can think of is a baby boy playing grown up. He focuses his electric blue eyes on her throat, examining the shallow scratches she left on her neck in panic. He turns to the peppy redhead and mumbles something the girl couldn't exactly make out. His voice isn't angry like the one she heard earlier, it's much different. For the briefest of moments she wonders who the voice belonged to, and where he went.

The auburn-haired girl turns on her heel and walks away from the scene, returning with gauze and a spray bottle full of antiseptic. Gin gestures to the nurse and smiles. "I must tend to other waking subjects."

The nurses nods and tends to the midnight-haired girl's wounds. "You must have really sharp fingernails!" the nurse says animatedly, trying, and failing, to ease the tension between the two.

The black-headed girl feels thick gauze connecting with her neck like they are best friends. The nurse sprays antiseptic, which also acts as a painkiller, on her skin. The dark headed girl also notices that her fingers are wet and hot, so she glances down at them, perplexed. Her fingertips are stained with blood. Her blood. The sight of her own bodily fluid makes the girl unexpectedly feel very faint, and her head falls bad onto something soft, but firm. It's a doctor-type pillow you would usually find in a medical examination chair at your local hospital. Her long dark hair –longer than she remembered it to be—slips off the edge of what she realizes is a very small cot. She had thought it was a coffin, but realized that it was just air-tight, black plastic walls that had incased her, and then been removed.

_Am I in a hospital? _

"Rukia, honey?" the pixie's voice attacks the girl and makes her flinch with its squeaky tone. Rukia glumly rolls her head in the nurses' direction. "You're awake now, Rukia. Do you feel nauseous? Can you try to sit up, dear?"

Small hands shift under the girl and pull her into a sitting position.

"I'm Orihime, by the way. I've been assigned as your nurse." She says perkily, and makes sure Rukia is settled against the headboard of the cot. Rukia takes advantage of the new angle to access her surroundings. She's surrounded by coffin-like cots of different shapes and sizes. She realizes that the black plastic must like a one way mirror, because she can see all the people in the cots –people of all shapes and sizes, in various stages of sleep—lined up against a clear glass wall engraved with neon-blue lights. The room she's in is shaped like a tunnel, and reminds her of a morgue. The air around her has a chilly, sterilized, and medical feel to it. There are various men and woman in long white coats and black underclothes who carry small white devices at their hips.

The doctors and nurses surround the coffin-cots, looking at their white hand-held devices, typing something into flat white computers set into the base of each coffin-cot. They mindlessly chat with other doctors and nurses, glancing every few seconds at a huge digital clock that dominates the west side of the tunnel. The clock is counting down. It reads forty-three days, twenty-three hours, forty-seven minutes, two seconds.

"_Gin Ichimaru!_" Orihime calls out into the tunnel, her voice echoing down the walls. The tunnel strangely reminds Rukia of a bee's nest, with the entire bees' army smarming around protecting their babies and bringing food to the Queen. The tunnel even has the same kind of shape. Round. But as if she studies closer, the walls are more octagonal than circular. "I need you to see if her pupils dilate," Orihime continues, "I'm not sure if she's really conscious—she's been so quiet!"

The pale doctor Rukia saw earlier ghosts over to my cot with unsettling grace. Glasses are situated high on his head, holding back his long silver hair like a headband, but he pulls them down to stare straight into her ornate eyes. He pulls out a small silver pen that, when he clicks the top, magically transforms into a light and blinds Rukia in her left eye. The auburn-headed pixie twills on, "She's seems a bit dazed, but I'm sure she'll come out of her state any second now."

The pale man named Gin nods. "I wouldn't be surprised if she's going into shock," the doctor mused. "That was quite an episode. I wonder if it means…" his sentence drifts off, as if he wanted to keep the rest of his thoughts to himself.

Orihime pats Rukia's back and rubs with soothing circles as Dr. Gin shines the light into Rukia's right eye. She flinches automatically and covers her face with a hand, weakly. She'd like to shine that thing right back in his electric blue eyes. They don't even seem real, they're so blue.

"Well, she's seems to be fully functional now," Gin speaks. "She's giving me the death glare. I think you can take over from here, Ms. Inoue."

Said person nods as Gin starts to walk away. "Oh, and send a message to Kurosaki that the first subject in his unit is up-and-running." Then he leaves to check on other cots lined up against the walls. It's then I realize that mine is the only one open. Orihime seems to notice my questioning gaze.

"If you _must know_, Rukia, we had some technical difficulties with your Box."

_So that's what they call it. Coffin-cot is more fitting, though, I think._

"It is supposed to automatically fill with air when you wake up, but apparently it, um, it didn't do that." Orihime smiles awkwardly and an embarrassed blush fills her cheeks. Rukia nods. Now that she was awake, she felt filled to the brim with energy. Like a coffee high, or sugar rush. Her fingers twitched and tapped out a beat-less rhythm on the cold surface under her butt. Her conscious mind suddenly wanted to ask questions: many of them. But before she could even open her mouth to speak, another voice penetrates her eardrums.

"Yo, Inoue." A nurse with spiky black hair and warm brown eyes approaches.

"Hi, Tatsuki!" Orihime smiles at the nurse and vigorously makes small talk. When their conversation ended, Tatsuki turned her nose up at Rukia with complete disregard, her warm eyes suddenly hardening into cold orbs. Rukia glares at the woman. Rukia doesn't know the nurse, but the black-haired nurse seems to know a lot about her. The nurse sighs, and makes her way to the foot of Rukia's Box. Her fingertips deftly tap on the small white screen situated there, and then she glances at the clock on the far side of the wall. "Well, you're up very early, Kuchiki. Although, I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing."

"I'm sure it's a good sign, Rukia, don't worry!" Orihime chirps.

"W-wh-" Rukia stutters, unable to choke out the typical "where am I?" because her throat still burns and teases her insides. She wants to know where she is, and how she got here. Orihime seems to understand her struggle, and sits on the edge of the cot. She places one of Rukia's hands gingerly in hers.

"Ms. Kuchiki, you are, -er- in the C21-0 sleep unit." Orihime made the last number sound like an 'oh,' like it was the name of a spaceship, or robot. "This might not be too fresh in your memory, this place." She continued and waved her hand through the air, showing off the beehive-like tunnel-hospital. "It has been a long time."

_A long time? _

Brief images flashed through Rukia's mind. Off-white walls smudged with dirt. An old, creaky bed with a faux-gold frame. A gray medicine cabinet full of pills she didn't really need. Before Rukia had woken up to her supposed grave, she had been crumbling in on herself in the bedroom of her apartment. Rukia squeezed her eyes shut to block out the memory.

"H-how…" She stammers; her throat is so coarse it aggravates her. She wanted to speak. "How did-d-" She falters again, biting her tongue in the process. Rukia winces as a disgusting rust-and-salt taste pools into her mouth. She starts to shake spastically, her arms and legs quivering.

"Oh dear," Orihime speaks, facing Tatsuki. "She's going through some of the waking symptoms. Should I give her some—"

"No, she'll be fine." Tatsuki brushed her off. "We don't want any more medicine contradicting with what is already in her body." Tatsuki's eyebrows narrow slightly, but noticeably.

"Not even some Technolopin to stop the shakes?" Orihime begs the older, more experienced nurse.

"Fine." Tatsuki huffs. "But just a couple hundred millos, okay?"

Orihime nods her agreement and taps something quickly into her little white hand-held, pursing her lips as she did so. "I'll be right back, Rukia. Just hold tight."

Rukia simply shakes her head, trying to hold herself together by pulling her legs up against her torso, wrapping pale arms around her knees. Orihime looks at the girl sadly; Tatsuki stares with apathy, and they both turn and walk away, leaving Rukia alone. Normally, the girl would have been bothered by this, but there are other people around. She's not quite alone. But, with no initiative where she could possibly be, or how she got there, Rukia felt unsettled, and lost. But for some odd reason, she was calmer than most. Serene.

The lovely feeling doesn't dwell in her system for long, because Rukia's nerves peak as another nurse comes up Rukia with a huge, annoying smile plastered on her face.

"Hi, er…" The nurse glances at the computer screen at the foot of the bed. "Kuchiki. I'm Nel, your personal nurse. Well, actually assistant to your personal nurse, but it's sort of the same thing—I can do all the stuff that Ms. Inoue does, so I'm kind of the same, right? I guess so. Sometimes I have to fetch her, like, a bagel or something, but that's not too bad, right? You're up early, huh? That's a little weird, but Dr. Ichimaru said it might happen to you, because you were thrashing around in your sleep, unlike the other subjects. Dr. Ichimaru and his protégé were debating whether or not you would just stop, like last time, or if they should decompress you. But here you are!"

_Does this woman have no lungs?!_

"What's w-wrong with you?" Rukia asks, because it's the first question that pops into her mind and out of her scorching mouth.

Nel smiles and ignores Rukia's question by patting her hair and gushing, "You're so pretty!"

Rukia glares at the nurse in such a way that it screams: "_I don't like being touched by annoying people. Thank you." _Nel just chuckles, but retracts her hand. Smart girl. Rukia notices that she's sort of pretty, in a way. But she's too fake. Nel caked on her make-up, and her hair is an unnatural shade of mint green. It's smoothed out with hairspray into a mop on her head, and her eyes flash a hue of purple that could only be achieved by contacts or genetic engineering. Fake eyelashes are everywhere, and she's decided to sport a long, maroon colored tattoo across her face.

Odd.

Rukia clears her throat. "Why am I sh-shaking?"

"Shaking is natural, you've been asleep for a really long time, and your muscles are reacting to movement," Neliel responds. When Rukia looks at her questionably, Neliel sighs, like she's bored and has said this over a million times. Rukia wonders if she has. "Ms. Inoue should have explained everything to you."

"She didn't." Rukia says, forcing back a smile when she realizes she can now form a proper, non-stuttering sentence. Even if it was only two words.

"Yeah. Well, I'll go fetch her for you, or something." Neliel leaves, whispering "_poor girl_" under her breath. Neliel is the third nurse to walk away and never come back. What _is_ taking Orihime so long? Rukia needs meds to stop the shaking. She feels like she is slowly being ripped apart, from the inside. And _God_, she is thirsty.

As if on cue, Orihime materializes in front of Rukia with a silver tray balanced in her hands. She probably came from a door set in the wall. "I'm back, Ruki!" The raven-haired girl sighs with annoyance at the nickname, and then with relief when she sees that Orihime is carrying a small bottle of pills, and a big glass of ice cold liquid. Rukia could tell from the condensation leaking on the glass.

"Ms. Kuchiki, you need to chew these pills before you drink anything, okay?" She hands me three medium-sized pills. One of which Rukia recognizes as anti-anxiety because of its distinctive, creamy yellow color. The other pills she could not identify. She chews the pills quickly, all at once. Rukia feels the chemical relief sliding over her and leans back against the wall. Her cot has no headboard.

Rukia's limbs slowly stop convulsing and her teeth relinquish their chattering at last when the pills take effect.

"Here, have some of this, for your throat." Orihime hands the girl a big glass, which isn't water at all. Rukia takes it in between her fingers and gawks at the silver, metallic liquid swirling inside.

_What._

She coughs; her mouth is dry as a bone, especially after having to chew the pills. Orihime softly pats Rukia's back until the fits are over with.

"Why is the water silver?" Rukia asks her.

Orihime giggles, "It's not water. It's better."

Rukia nods and sips the liquid cautiously. It's cold and delicious against her lips, tongue, mouth, and throat. She downs the entire glass in five gulps and then tosses the glass over to Orihime, who catches it reflexively.

The gauge on Rukia's neck scratches, so she reaches up to rip it off, but Orihime gently places a manicured hand on her forearm, silently telling her "no". Rukia huffs dramatically and crosses her arms; the shakes have almost completely stopped, leaving only a few traces of vibrations in her fingers and toes.

"You scratched your neck as you woke… you were having a panic attack, Ms. Kuchiki. Did some pretty bad damage, too. Please keep the bandage on; we don't want you to bleed on anything and desterilize the environment." Orihime presses her finely-painted fingertips against some medical tape just under Rukia's chin, forcing it back to its original state. "I bet you have some questions, don't you Rukia?"

"This weird woman, Neliel, I think her name was," Rukia speaks. "I mean, she said you'd give me answers, and trust me, I'm so confused." I gape at the beehive around me. It's insane and so full of life, but I feel so dead.

"Wait, you don't remember anything, Rukia? Nothing at all?"

"The last thing I remember is sitting around in my apartment, about to go to sleep." Rukia declares, not wanting to tell her the truth about the unmarked pills –her addiction—sitting in her medicine cabinet, or tell Orihime about her ivory sink spotted with residue of illegal substances. If Rukia reminded herself of what happened, the demons inside would unleash and hold her prisoner.

"Oh, Rukia, you must have been dreaming. The last memory you should have is walking into this very room, the sleep unit, to lie in this exact console." Her gray eyes squint a little, as if she's trying to squeeze these answers right out of me.

The nurse's statement shocks Rukia into a paralyzed state. After a few moments, when Orihime asks if she's fallen asleep with her eyes closed, is when Rukia opens her mouth. "That's impossible. I don't remember coming here at all, you know, willingly. Where am I _exactly?_ This is unlike any hospital I've ever seen. How long have I been asleep?"

"Rukia," the auburn-haired pixie places a hand on my right shoulder, concern on every etch of her face. Her expression worries Rukia, immediately. Nurses aren't supposed to look at you with utter sympathy. Hell, Rukia would even settle for the other's nurses disregarding glare. "Rukia," Orihime repeats again, almost like she doesn't want to say what she's thinking aloud.

"…What?" Rukia asks, shaking Orihime's arm, compelling an answer, any answer, out of this woman.

"Rukia, you've been sleeping for ten years."

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_End of chapter one._

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**A/N: Well. I've started another fic, as you can see. Now, before you get mad at me for not posting the 1st chapter of The Colored Universe (The Ivory Tower part 2) first, please just hear me out. **

**The Colored Universe is still in production. I'm trying to plan out more plots, and focus on character development and such. I think that The Ivory Tower is quite rushed, and put together very well. (Hint: it isn't. I wrote it chapter-by-chapter, rarely reading it over. It's a mess).**

**So yeah. And it's not like this fic is brand new. It's actually an older fic I wrote in the 7****th**** grade, I think. I just spent a day or two re-editing it to make the writing better and to change it from Bella's POV to Rukia's 3****rd**** person. Oh, and here's a funfact: **_**it used to be a twilight Fanfiction.**_** I know, I'm cringing too. I used to be obsessed with twilight in my middle school years, but thankfully I've put the whole series behind me. (It really is just **_**awful**_**). **

**I hope you liked this first chapter! Updates for this will come pretty fast because half of it is basically written already from younger self.**

**Have a lovely day.**

**-Liym Enello**


	2. Chapter 2: Paranormal Normal

_The Subject: C21-0_

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**Chapter Two: Paranormal Normal**

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_The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.  
__Elbert Hubbard_

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_Ten __**years**__?_ _Ten years of life, wasted._She thinks to herself. She can feel her mind slipping slowly, but she has too much energy to succumb to surprised unconsciousness. She simply closes her eyes with conviction. Her irises flicker relentlessly under her closed lids with memories of her past.

_"Rukia? Rukia!"_ _Relentless rhythm. A hypnotic harmony of voices calling her name in an endless symphony. There's a soft clanking sound, like a little tube of plastic connecting with a tile floor. More voices. Soft hands brush against her face but she can barely feel their tender touch. Their loveliness is slipping away from her._

"Honey?" Orihime pats her hand that is laying limp at her side. "Rukia, dear, are you alright?" The concerned tone of her voice echoed throughout the tunnel. Orihime placed her hands on Rukia's Box. Suddenly, Rukia could feel that she was in motion. Orihime was pushing her Box down the hallway, relocating her somewhere. Rukia opens her eyes, reading the nurse's face. Her expression is full of hurt, and sympathy. Rukia decides to let her off easy. "Yes, I'm fine, Orihime."

"I'm sorry that I had to be the one to tell you. But, it's better to, um, know about it than to live a lie, right?" she says as they continues down the tunnel. Rukia's eyes train on the number of people sleeping in the Boxes. They're so secluded, and yet, completely bare to everyone's eyes.

"Sure," Rukia mumbles under her breath. Her eyes stare at a particular Box, with a small, sleeping girl inside, not wanting to make eye contact with the sad, gray, doe-eyes of her nurse. But it's been ten _fucking years_. That's three thousand six hundred and fifty days that she never got to live through and experience. Give her a break.

"Here," the red-head hands Rukia another container of the strange silver-metallic liquid she had kept clipped at her side. "I want you to drink one of these every couple of hours, okay? It will, um, bring your metabolism back up and boost your intellectual activity. Your brain has only been working about one-third of its capacity while you were sleeping. It needs a little kick." Orihime giggles awkwardly as Rukia downs the glass in a matter of thirty seconds and hands the container back to her. When the two women reach the end of the tunnel, Orihime turns to the left down a hallway hidden from Rukia's earlier vantage point.

"Where are we going?" Rukia asks.

"To another unit. You're not sleeping, so why would you be in the sleep unit?" Orihime chuckles to herself.

"Ah, I see."

"Mhm," Orihime confirms. "Specifically, I'm taking you to unit B-242 for further physical and mental examination. Then," the redhead glances at her handheld, almost driving Rukia into a wall as she did so.

"Orihime!" Rukia shouts as the steel rails on her Box screech against the metal walls lined with neon blue lights.

"Oh!" Orihime swerves to avoid colliding with some expensive-looking piece of equipment. Rukia glares at her nurse, who looks straight ahead with embarrassment. Orihime coughs, and then says, "Achem, then I'm supposed to take you to Kurosaki's unit, for testing."

"Testing?"

"Oh, don't worry about it, Ruki." Orihime pronounces her nickname fondly. "We're not the bad guys, here."

For some reason, Rukia wasn't quite sure if Orihime was speaking the truth. But she shut her mouth anyway, growing tired of Orihime's perky voice answering all her questions. Even though the most imposing question of all, why she was sleeping in that unit for ten years, was about to explode out of her mouth, she kept quiet. Maybe she wasn't to avoid drama. Maybe she was just too tired—mentally, not physically—to say anything. Either way, Rukia didn't really want to find out.

"Ah, here we are!" chirps Orihime as they round a corner. "I swear, if I didn't have my hand-held we would have been lost in these labyrinthine tunnels for, like, ever."

Rukia chuckled at her nurse's comical simplicity. Orihime rolled Rukia into the B-242 unit and set her up against a blue wall lined with buttons and plugs and other intricate medical equipment Rukia could not recognize. Gently, Orihime tucked Rukia into her Box like an overly-protective mother. "Can I get you anything before I leave?" Orihime asks as she makes her way over to the gliding double-doors of the B-242 unit. There is real concern in her eyes and Rukia can't put her finger on why. Rukia can feel her forehead crease into worried lines as she contemplated this.

"No, I'll be fine." She puts on her best smile for show.

Orihime nods again and ducks through the door.

Other nurses bounce around the B-242 unit walls like busy little bees, tending certain patients, and such. They look very busy, so Rukia decides to not bother any of them with pestering questions.

After a few minutes of waiting, one of the nurses, who introduces herself as Momo, starts to examine Rukia's vitals. The nurse pulls on a cloth divider to protect Rukia's modesty as she tells her to take her hospital gown off. Rukia does this with some difficulty. Her muscles haven't been used in ten years. It takes a while to get used to motion. But after that, Rukia goes through the general physical without any trouble. Momo tells her that she's in top health condition, and then leaves, pulling the cloth divider back into place, letting the world view Rukia for all she is.

Rukia breathes a sigh of relief—she's always hated physicals—and scans the room out of boredom. The walls are still the same baby-blue, with white neon lights stretching up to a very high ceiling. Two beds are situated next to hers, one is empty, and the other is not. There is a man laying down, his back twisted away from her. His red hair shines dully under the forceful white lights, and Rukia wonders why they're so bright. She finds it almost impossible to blink.

The man stirs, sensing a person's eyes trailed on him. He's covered in stark white sheets, his head and neck the only body parts visible. Rukia notices that his neck is heavily muscled and has long, native-like tattoos running up the contours of his skin. They're black and meaningless designs that travel down from the tip of his forehead to the base of his neck, where it disappears under the sheets.

"Hello," Rukia mumbles.

"...What?" The man turns his face slightly towards Rukia, piercing her with brown eyes. He's average looking, with a slight menace in his features, like he would beat up some random guy on the street for exercise.

Rukia glares at him. "I just wanted to say hello." She spits. The man slowly shifts over to his left side, so he's facing her. He flashes a smile. "Sorry," he says, sincerely. "I didn't mean to be so rude. I've had a rough day."

"Tell me about it." Rukia scoffs and rolls her eyes. "I bet mine was worse than yours."

"Oh, is that so?" The bright red-head wriggles his eyebrows. "I was working on some electrical lighting, fell off the ladder because the fucking spotter wasn't doing his job, and broke my foot. _My foot._"

Rukia giggles softly at the mental image. His red hair flailing with the gravity of the fall, his arms struggling to catch himself. He seems like the kind of guy that would have brushed it off, pretending not to be hurt whilst limping towards the infirmary.

"It's not that funny," the man clenches his jaw with annoyance. "So what did _you_ do?"

The laughter emitting from Rukia's mouth ceased as her lips formed a tight line. "You know, to be honest, I'm not exactly sure. But," she clears her throat, "I've just woken up from a ten year long nap, if that means anything to you."

The red-head opens his mouth with shock, his eyebrows furrowing. "Oh," he says, "I didn't realize you were…" he pauses, unwilling to finish his sentence.

"What?"

"One of _them_." He states. "A_ Subject_." He rolls over completely to face her head-on. He stares at her more intently, like he was judging her, somehow. Rukia scowls and crosses her arms over her chest protectively.

"I didn't know that this was such a taboo topic." She says spitefully. "But my problem definitely beats yours."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, Princess, I'm still waiting for a cast." He points at his foot, which is poking through the sheets at the end of the bed. Rukia has to smile at that one. She glances at the clock to watch it tick for a few seconds while the man opposite her smiles and turns over on his back, his arms splayed under his head as a second pillow. Out of the corner of her eye, Rukia sees him open his mouth like he's about to say something snarky when she hears the double doors squeak nosily as they open and click together as they close. "Momo! I need you in my unit to prep for a premature Subject—stat."

"Yes, Dr. Kurosaki!"

_Finally,_ the doctor is here. She just wants this whole evaluation to be over with. Rukia brings her eyes up in the direction of the door, but instead of seeing Orihime, who was supposed to cart her away, or some other old doctor, she sees a youthful man. His auburn hair is as wild as her reality, and it springs out in all directions. She wonders if it's as soft as it seems. Shimmering tawny eyes pierce hers as he looks at her apathetically, like the black-haired nurse had before. His lips twist down into a scowl he ghosts over to Rukia. She's distracted by the broad width of his shoulders when she notices that he's wearing a long white doctor's coat. The raven-headed girl selfishly wishes he was her nurse instead of Orihime. She'd kill for him to be checking her IV every day.

"Heckling the new patients again, Renji?" the young doctor teases the other man. Rukia's eyes go wide at the sound of his voice. It's the voice that had called out when she was in her supposed grave, the one that demanded her Box to be opened. He had saved her life. Rukia is suddenly overcome by immense gratitude.

"Go to hell, Ichigo." Renji states, gathering up his sheets and throwing them behind him. He swings his legs, carefully, over the end of the bed to face the doctor. "When am I gonna get this cast? I gotta get back to work, ya know."

"Yeah, that's not in my repertoire." The auburn-haired doctor smirks smugly. "Go get one of your lady friends to fix it for you. You have plenty of those."

"What's that supposed to mean?!" Renji exclaims.

Ichigo waves him off, and approaches my Box. "Kuchiki, is it?" He asks.

I nod, and then say, out of the blue, "Thank you."

His dark hazel eyes melt from lethargic to puzzled in a matter of seconds. "What for?" His hand reaches out to grasp the back of his neck, nervously.

"My Box wasn't working, and I couldn't breathe. You opened it for me, remember?"

His mouth sets in a hard line, his eyes darting everywhere but her face. "Oh, you are the subject from this morning? I had almost forgotten…"

Rukia's cheeks burn at the last comment. Was she not important enough to remember? She didn't quite like being called "a subject", either. Renji clears his throat awkwardly, and reaches for two crutches leaning against his bed. "Well, I'll just be on my way, then." He tries to be as casual as possible as he crosses the threshold and leaves the B-242 unit without another word.

At that moment, Orihime comes bursting through the huge double doors. "Sorry I'm late, Rukia! I'll go take you to Kurosaki's unit—oh. Well, it looks like he's already here."

"Hello, Ms. Inoue." Dr. Kurosaki says politely, he seemed relieved by the distraction.

"Hi," Orihime blushes a deep scarlet and fidgets with the hem of her nurse's outfit. "So, um, do you still want me to take Rukia to your unit, or?"

Ichigo touches the bridge of his nose with annoyance. He really didn't want to have to walk with the overly-perky (in more ways than one,) woman all the way to his unit. "No, its fine Ms. Inoue, I can take her myself."

"Are you sure?" Orihime glances at Rukia, who was still eavesdropping on the conversation, picking up all the subtle body language the two expressed. Rukia's nurse was in love with Dr. Kurosaki—that was for sure. And he—well, he tolerated her.

"Yes, I'm sure." He practically hisses. "How about you go and put a cast on Mr. Abarai instead?"

She nods, and timidly says, "Okay." Orihime is about to leave the room when she turns on her heel and asks Renji, "Do you want a white, blue, or pink cast?"

"Whi—" Renji starts to speak.

"Pink." Ichigo interrupts the man with the broken foot. "Definitely pink."

The red-head was about to protest, but Orihime was already out the door. "Damn you, Kurosaki!" Renji spits towards the doctor. "Who knows how long I'll have that pink shit on my foot!"

Dr. Kurosaki simply rolls his eyes and grabs Rukia's Box, reading it for transfer. "That's what you get for pestering the new kids."

Rukia blushes and wraps her arms around her legs. The chilliness of the air was starting to bother her. She gathered up the sheets on the bed and tucked her legs into them.

"Hey!" Renji shouts angrily as Ichigo chuckles and rolls the raven-haired Subject out of the B-242 unit.

"That wasn't very nice of you." Rukia pipes up as Ichigo maneuvers around various nurses and equipment.

"Yeah, well he's not the angel you would think him to be."

"I never said that." Rukia rolls her eyes.

"Whatever," he said childishly, his voice going back to its monotonous, apathetic tone.

"Why are you so curt with me?" Rukia asks. "I haven't done anything wrong, but most of the nurses here are treating me like shit—you are, too."

"Don't be ridiculous." Ichigo glides her Box down another hallway.

"And what is with this!" Rukia gestures to her Box. "I'm not crippled, I can walk."

"You actually can't," Ichigo says, "not really. You may have been able to stand up for a physical but you cannot, by any means, walk on your own yet."

"Watch me." Rukia says angrily, and throws her legs over the bed. Surprised, Ichigo stops pushing the Box so Rukia doesn't hurt herself. Her legs, quivering like a baby doe's, touch the cold metal floor. She shivers as a chill seems to seep into her toes, up and throughout her entire body. She grasps onto her Box for support, and takes a step forward, one foot in front of the other.

Her knees buckle and she trips immediately. Not what she was aiming for.

"Shit—" Ichigo stretches his arms out instinctually to catch the falling woman. He circles his arms around her just in time, all the breath she had escaping her. He forcefully settles her back onto the Box like a stern father. "Stay there," his eye narrow with annoyance. "Stubborn little…" he doesn't bother to continue.

Rukia has never been more embarrassed in her life. She tucks herself back into the white sheets and pulls her knees up against her torso. She ducks her head, trying to hide her flushed face from Dr. Kurosaki.

The silence growing between them was deafening, but Rukia kept her mouth shut. He did the same. They arrived in his unit without one syllable having been spoken the whole fifteen minute ride there.

"I'll have Momo prep you for testing." He says curtly, and walks away, his large hand pawing the back of his neck again.

This was going to be interesting.

* * *

_End of Chapter Two_


	3. Chapter 3: Socially Under Construction

_The Subject: C-210_

* * *

**Chapter Three: Socially Under Construction**

* * *

"_All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."_

_-Unknown_

* * *

_Her knees buckle and she trips immediately. Not what she was aiming for._

_"Shit—" Ichigo stretches his arms out instinctually to catch the falling woman. He circles his arms around her just in time, all the breath she had escaping her. He forcefully settles her back onto the Box like a stern father. "Stay there," his eye narrow with annoyance. "Stubborn little…" he doesn't bother to continue._

_Rukia has never been more embarrassed in her life. She tucks herself back into the white sheets and pulls her knees up against her torso. She ducks her head, trying to hide her flushed face from Dr. Kurosaki._

_The silence growing between them was deafening, but Rukia kept her mouth shut. He did the same. They arrived in his unit without one syllable having been spoken the whole fifteen minute ride there._

_"I'll have Momo prep you for testing." He says curtly, and walks away, his large hand pawing the back of his neck again._

_This was going to be interesting._

* * *

"Rukia?"

The small girl wakes up to long, shiny, auburn hair, beaming gray eyes, and a nervous smile which slowly sets into a firm line.

Orihime.

"...Wh-what..?" She musters, her eyes fluttering irritably with the brightness of the neon lights up above.

"Good Morning, sunshine! You've been sleeping for a while, but we'll give you some drugs so you can stay alert, okay?" Orihime leans over her as she smile widens. Rukia and Orihime are situated right outside of Kurosaki's unit, in a Recovery Room. The room is decorated much like the rest of the hospital—modern, and cold. Shiny gray metal walls line the room, along with bright, yellow neon lights.

"Sure, Orihime. Just give me whatever medicine I need to stay awake. I've slept enough." Rukia mumbles, full of self-pity. Orihime just nods, her eyes downcast. Rukia almost wants to beat her upside the head. Why does Orihime look so forlorn? It's not like _she_ has been sleeping for the last ten years! Orihime pats Rukia's head reassuringly, and with a little sympathy. It takes Rukia all the self-control she can muster to not pull her hair out and call her an idiot for treating her like a child. Rukia was _not_a child.

Orihime notices Rukia's menacing glare scorching her retinas and stops patting her head like a puppy. "Well—er, anyway—your tests went well. At least that's what Dr. Kurosaki said. You were put to sleep for most of the procedure, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so." Rukia muses, and blushes at the mention of Kurosaki, thinking back to mere hours before. After Ichigo had dropped her off in his unit, the bubbly nurse Momo had prepped her, meaning she was stripped down and put in a thin, gossamer-like hospital gown. Rukia had blushed when she had to put in on. It was practically see-through! But she calmed down when Momo told her that she would be sleeping through most of the procedure. At least it wasn't like those other embarrassing physicals, when you're practically naked in front of a man you barely know as he prods your body. Even if he is good-looking.

"Good," Orihime says. "Your results should come through in about an hour, or so…"

"Um, Orihime?" Rukia asks gently, trying to persuade her nurse into giving away information that seems so guarded, and secretive.

"Hm?"

"What exactly did you test me for?"

Orihime seems flustered as she mumbles her way through about a dozen different answers which didn't really make sense to Rukia. Finally, Orihime just says: "I don't think I'm authorized to give you that information..."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rukia furrows her brows and fiddles with the new sheets Orihime had placed on her Box.

"It means I _can't tell you_." Orihime says, exasperatedly. The woman crosses her arms and gives Rukia a stern look.

"Well, can you get me someone who _can_ tell me what's going on?" Rukia says angrily, giving up on the kind approach to this. "First, you tell me that I've been sleeping for ten years, then force me to do all these tests—and I haven't gotten a straight-forward answer from anybody in this hospital! If this is even a hospital…"

Orihime simply watches the raven-haired girl rant on with sad eyes. She lets Rukia blow off some steam, and then starts to set up an IV. Rukia just continues to glare at her—angry that her nurse won't answer her damn questions.

"I'm just going to administer your medicine now, so you won't get drowsy." Orihime makes a poor attempt at a smile as she quickly unwraps a new needle from a package and sticks it into the top of a bottle filled with clear, crisp liquid. Rukia reads the name on the bottle. Paraquin. It is a medicine that she's never taken—or even heard of—before. Orihime professionally taps the tip of the needle with her finger and then sticks it into Rukia's IV.

Instantly, Rukia is wide awake—filled to the brim with energy. She wants to do jumping jacks. Dance in a night club till the break of dawn. Move to the beat. Fluid, restless, moving.

"Wow." Rukia says simply, forgetting, for a moment, about her current predicament and focusing on the intoxicating waves of energy rolling through her petite body.

"Pretty powerful stuff, huh? It keeps us all moving, moving, moving!" Orihime taps the needle again for emphasis, and the motion creates a clean, high-pitched ding. It reminds Rukia of her nurse's voice.

"What do you mean...'keeps you all going'?" The girl asks, her indigo eyes shining with the effect of the drug. It made her happy, too.

"Doctors and nurses rarely sleep here, Rukia. We have so much work to do, and sleep is pretty much pointless anyway, isn't it? Unless, of course, you want to dream. Which is why I sleep every chance I get!" Orihime winks at her patient. Rukia wonders what her nurse dreams about. Her boyfriend?

_Ichigo?_

"Do you have a husband, Orihime?" Rukia wonders out loud as she eyes her nurse's flashy ring on her hand. It's silver and simply cut, with a massive diamond sitting on top that sparkles luminously off her ring finger.

"Oh, uh—no. I have a fiancé." She says somewhat glumly, crossing her arms again defensively. "His name is Uryu." You would think that the bubbly red-head would sound enthusiastic while mentioning her beloved, but her voice is monotonic and lacking interest.

"Well, um, I'm happy for you, Orihime."

"Thanks." The nurse says curtly, her eyes darting over to stare at the wall behind Rukia's head.

Just then, a certain orange-headed doctor comes barging into the room. Rukia holds her breath when she sees is long, lithe figure bursting through the double doors of the Recovery Room. "The results are in." He looks worried as he reads off of his hand-held device. His orange brows furrow deeply, as does his scowl. He seems to be very deep in thought as he skims over the results.

"Hey, Dr. Kurosaki!" Orihime chirps, and waves him over. Her emotion is polar opposite from before, when she was talking about her future husband. It made Rukia believe that her nurse was having an affair with the doctor. That thought was quickly brushed aside, though, when Ichigo looked up at Orihime with aggravated annoyance. No, they couldn't be having an affair.

Although Rukia feels radiant from the miracle medicine Paraquin, she knows that she must look like shit from sleeping so long. She runs her thin fingers through her hair—practically a mop at the base of her neck—and quickly gives up when she realizes that it's hopeless.

"Hello, Ms. Inoue." He acknowledges her politely by nodding his head before becoming engrossed in his hand-held once again. "This is strange."

"What is?" Orihime bounces over to the doctor's side, making sure that her breasts were pushed up against his arm as she did so. Ichigo shifted over slightly to break the contact, a form of disgust overshadowing his face. He scrolls through the results as Orihime peeks over his shoulder like a child with an interest so piqued they could burst with excitement.

"What's so strange?" Orihime pipes up again.

"It's the Subject's brain activity…" the doctor contemplates.

Rukia blushes scarlet, partially from the mention of her, but mostly from the derogatory "Subject" term. She huffs angrily and glares at the doctor,who hasn't even acknowledged her since he walked in.

"What about her brain?" Orihime asks, pressing her body up against Ichigo's, again. He clears his throat awkwardly and steps aside, again. Is there nothing he can do to rid himself of this woman?

He sighs, and continues. "The Subject's brain activity has accelerated far beyond what we first perceived would be."

"How so?" The nurse asks. Dr. Kurosaki turns, and hands the device over to Orihime. She takes it in her hands, and looks over the results with interest that was dipped in suppressed anxiety. The nurse's eyes widen, and then she hands the device back to the doctor. "That is strange."

Ichigo grunts his approval.

"Excuse me," Rukia says, trying to keep her voice below a shout. "But how is my brain activity strange? Being that it _is_ mine, I would really like to know."

Ichigo finally focuses his attention on the small girl sitting in the Box. She really is very tiny, and he wonders how so much power could reside in such a small body. He scratches the back of his neck, nervously. "It's none of your business."

"_Excuse me_?"

"I said, it's none of your business."

"It's _my fucking body_!" Rukia's voice rises. "I have every right to know what's going on!"

Ichigo touches the bridge of his nose with his index finger and thumb, an annoyed gesture he has been making frequently. "Fine," He musters, closing his eyes and sighing deeply. "You were put here, on the C21-0, as part of a medical experiment. Does that answer your questions?"

"_No!_"

Ichigo looks over at Orihime, begging the bodacious woman to step in and cover for him. She doesn't. He sighs again, deeply, and scowls. "We're using your body to study a recently manufactured drug that may or may not be able to augment human physicality and psychological awareness."

"English, doc." The raven-haired Subject speaks.

Dr. Kurosaki rolls his eyes, and continues to grab the back of his neck awkwardly. "You're being tested for a drug that could make us humans smarter. Faster. The better animal."

Rukia's thin, black eyebrows rise. "So, you're saying that I'm… a fucking experiment… for a drug that can turn us into _superhumans_?"

"Yes." Ichigo says simply.

"Holy shit…" Rukia glances down at her arms, and noticed how thin they were. How can she be superhuman? She doesn't feel any smarter, or stronger. She's just… Rukia.

"The drug hasn't completely taken effect on your body, yet. It's still in the advancing stage. We just injected it into your body forty-two hours ago." The doctor says, seeming to read her mind. Rukia looks up at the doctor, into his amber-colored eyes.

"When it takes effect…. Will I—will I feel different?" She asks with pleading eyes and a quivering voice. "I mean, will I still be _me_?"

"Of course," Ichigo glances off the left. He doesn't seem to be enjoying the conversation. He just must not have found it as intoxicating as Rukia did. "The traits in your brain will always stay the same. Unless, of course, the drug takes on some irrevocable consequences…"

"Irrevocable conse—"

A big, burly man suddenly crashes into Rukia's Box, speeding the cot forward. Rukia squeals in surprise, and Ichigo makes a move to steady the Box with a hand before it was sent crashing into a wall.

"Hey!" Ichigo growls, turning towards the man.

"Sorry, sorry!" The man says with a voice that barely rose against a whisper. He was huge—probably around seven feet tall. He had a darker complexion, and tender brown eyes. Soft, curly hair. He was wearing a nametag:

"_Sado 'Chad' Yasutora"_

"I'm so sorry!" Chad pleads and grabs hold of Rukia's Box, setting her back in her place against the opposite wall. "I wasn't looking where I was going."

Ichigo chuckles slightly. "You almost cost us a lot of money, Chad."

The burly man just smiles and nods, seeming distracted. After a small bout of silence, he speaks. "Well, I have to go. You know—Unit G stuff."

"Ugh, Unit G." Ichigo makes a disgusted face. "Good luck with that, buddy."

"Yeah." Chad exits the room, throwing an apologetic look at Rukia over his broad shoulder. The girl tries to put on a smile. Chad seemed like the only down-to-earth person she's seen since she woke up. She wondered if she would ever see the humongous, tall man again.

Orihime ran a hand through her hair and then addressed the orange-headed doctor. "Well, thank you for stopping by, Dr. Kurosaki! Now, I have a few more things to take care of with Rukia. If you'll excuse us…" she grabbed hold of Rukia's Box and started to cart her forward. But Rukia wasn't having any of that. Rukia still needed answers.

"Wait!" Rukia shouts. Orihime ignores her, and says a quick goodbye to the doctor over her shoulder as she continues to cart Rukia away. The doctor nods towards the auburn-haired nurse, glancing at Rukia's retreating figure as he did so. The results he had received were impossible. There was no way all that power could reside in her. The drug wasn't _that_ strong.

"I said wait!" Rukia swings her legs over her cot and jumps out.

"Goodness!" Orihime gasps. Rukia ignores her nurse and runs toward Ichigo, trying to focus on making her legs work to out-run her nurse.

"I don't understand…" Rukia whispers. Ichigo's eyes are wide as he watches the staggering girl. She moves faster. "How did I get here? Why am called a Subject? I'm a human being!"

She trips, and Ichigo lurches forward to catch her instinctually, must like last time. The girl squeals in surprise. The doctor holds on to the girl under her shoulders while she looks up at him, halfway on the floor. Her bright indigo eyes are filled with tears; some are streaking down her pale cheeks. "Please, I just…" she cries, becoming a messy heap on the floor when she tears away from his outstretched arms. She curls up into a fetal position and just cries, and cries.

"Oh my god…" Orihime runs up to Rukia, and places a hand on her shoulder. "Dr. Kurosaki… help me, please?" Orihime nods her head towards the Box, where she intended to place the sobbing raven-haired girl. Ichigo gulps, and slides his hands under the girl, and scoops her up. He sets her down in her box, and Orihime covers Rukia in sheets, tucking her in comfortingly.

"I—I need…" Rukia stutters in between hiccups. "I need to get out of here."

"You can't." Ichigo states curtly.

"But—"

"Trust me, Subject." He says. "You cannot."

The girl turns her head away from him. She was still crying, but she wasn't being as loud about it. Orihime clucks her tongue and gives Rukia a sympathetic look before carting Rukia out of the room. Ichigo looked at the swinging double doors that the two women had left in their wake. He wasn't sure why—but the Subject was different from the others, and not just physically.

* * *

"Dr. Kurotsuchi," The green-haired woman nods to a man dressed in floor-length, white, scientist garb as she walked briskly into Unit X.

"Hello, Miss Neliel Tu Odelschwanck." He says through his teeth. She nods to the man, and then hands him her hand-held device. He paws it from her hand, and inspects it, quickly, without really looking. "Tell me, woman, what is this?"

"New results. From a Subject." Neliel tells him.

"But I originally assumed that we were not expecting the Subjects to awaken until—"

"I know. She's an early riser."

"Hmm," Mayuri Kurotsuchi looks at the device with renowned interest. "These results are… fascinating. Which Subject is this?"

"The Subject is called Rukia Kuchiki."

He smiles, all his pearly white teeth, filed into straight perfection, showing. "I see…" There is a pause. "Tell me more about this Subject, Neliel."

* * *

Orihime led Rukia into another Unit, titled Unit L, which stood for "Living". It was a unit specifically made for housing doctors, nurses, and Subjects. It seemed, to Rukia, that once you entered the C21-0, you could never leave. At least, that's what it felt like. Why else would they live here?

After her episode, Rukia had stayed mostly silent as Orihime led her through the labyrinth of hallways, rooms, and conveyor belts which acted as stairs, to lead her into Unit L.

Rukia spoke up for the first time in twenty minutes. "Where are we going?"

"I'm taking you to your room." Orihime responds simply.

"I get a room?"

"Of course you do, silly!" Orihime says. "Where else would we keep you?"

"Well, being that most of the people in this place treat me like I'm less than human, I assumed that I would be caged up like an animal." Rukia says, hotly.

Orihime blushes scarlet. "Don't talk like that Rukia, you know it's not true."

The raven-haired girl huffs and slumps into her bed, pissed. Like hell they didn't treat her that way! First, that Tatsuki girl was apathetic, and cold. Even her doctor, Ichigo Kurosaki, was less than pleasant to her, and treated her like a "thing."

"We're almost there." Orihime interrupts Rukia's thoughts. Then, the two girls reach the third floor of Unit L. The Subjects' floor. They enter a room called 3-B4, and Orihime wheels Rukia through the door. "You can get up now, Rukia. I think you might be able to walk on your own, if you go slowly."

Rukia nods, and appraises her surroundings. This is high-tech. Very high-tech. The room is about twenty feet long, and thirty feet wide. Very spacious. There's a small, holographic television resting on a glass stand on the right wall. A queen-sized bed rests in the top left corner and has black silk sheets that look so comforting Rukia wants to snuggle in them all day. A simple glass nightstand accommodates the bed and there is a giant gray rug covering the floor of standard gray metal that this hospital seems to love. There's a large faded-glass wardrobe a few yards from the bed, and another door set in the wall that leads to God-knows-where.

"Wow, this is really nice." Rukia says. She gets up from her Box. Her legs are still a little wobbly, but she is able to make it to the bed without incident. She brushes her fingertips across the black silk sheets, and sighs. They're so soft. The room could use a little color but she wasn't going to complain. She was expecting a cell, after all. "Where does that door lead?"

"Personal bathroom." Orihime states. She is deftly pressing a multitude of buttons in a hologram set in the wall by the door. "I'm programming your name into this room, Rukia. There is another panel just outside the door. If you press your hand against it, then it will unlock and let you in."

Rukia smiles and flops down on the silken bed, feeling the sheets, the sweet softness of it all. Her energy from the Paraquin seems to be going down, but she still isn't tired in any way.

"You can also have anybody you'd like, with your permission, to be programmed into the system as well if you want them to have access to your room." Orihime continues, "Dr. Kurosaki, Dr. Ichimaru, and I are already programmed in, since we're your designated doctors."

"Cool," Rukia says, quite agitated by her nurses' rambling. She just wanted to be left alone.

Orihime sighs, and finishes her work with the hologram. "You just sit tight in here, okay? I'll be back in an hour or so to give you a tour of the hospital."

"Sure thing," Rukia says, exasperated.

Orihime nods and starts to leave the room, but her hand pauses on the nob. She turns to Rukia, who looks weary and sad lying down on the bed. "And Rukia?"

"Mhm." Rukia acknowledges her without looking at her.

Orihime clears her throat. "This place isn't really all that bad. Just give it a chance."

Rukia rolls over on the bed so that her back is to Orihime. She was silent. Orihime purses her lips and closes the door, effectively leaving Rukia alone for the first time since she woke up.

* * *

_End of Chapter Three_


	4. Chapter 4: Topsy-Turvy

_The Subject: C21-0_

* * *

**Chapter Four: Topsy-Turvy**

* * *

_"You can't blame gravity for falling in love."_

_-Albert Einstein_

* * *

_Orihime nods and starts to leave the room, but her hand pauses on the nob. She turns to Rukia, who looks weary and sad lying down on the bed. "And Rukia?"_

_"Mhm." Rukia acknowledges her without looking at her._

_Orihime clears her throat. "This place isn't really all that bad. Just give it a chance."_

_Rukia rolls over on the bed so that her back is to Orihime. She was silent. Orihime purses her lips and closes the door, effectively leaving Rukia alone for the first time since she woke up._

* * *

When Rukia wakes, she is still wrapped in the midnight silk sheets of her bed. She opens her eyes, slowly, relishing the numbness that accompanies the first moments of waking up. For a few precious seconds, she doesn't know where she is, and then it hits her all at once. She's a "Subject," as they like to call her. She seems to be trapped in some trippy hospital, which, according to Dr. Kurosaki, provides no means of escape.

Lovely.

She quickly throws the sheets off of her body, and swings her legs over the bed to pace the room. Rukia switches on the holographic television in her room just so silence of the atmosphere would cease. Then she lies back in her bed, lounging like a house cat while she awaits some sort of news.

After about ten minutes, Rukia huffs. Bored. She rises again, and pads over to the personal bathroom connected to her room. She stares at the large bath sitting about two feet into the floor, with only a few inches of plastic rising above it in order to stop over flowing water. Gorgeous red tile surrounds it, finally providing her room with some color. Rukia fiddles her fingers and runs her hands repeatedly through her hair to rid of the disarray. A few seconds of contemplating later, Rukia tries to turn on the bath. There doesn't seem to be any sort of knob to turn on the water.

"Are you _kidding_ me…" Rukia runs a nervous hand through her black locks again, frustrated as hell. "You think I would be able to fucking run a bath, but no…" She steps closer to the bath, and one of the red tiles surrounding the fixture clicks and moves downward. Rukia steps back, surprised, as the tile rises from the floor to reveal a thin panel with an array of buttons and gadgets connected to it. She eyes a button with the symbol of a shower head. Instantly, a light splatter of water falls from the ceiling, creating a shower.

"Neat," Rukia says to herself. After about five minutes of studying, and guess-and-check strategy, she is able to run some hot water into the bath. She keeps the shower on, mostly because she doesn't know how to turn it off, but partly because the pitter-patter sound of water hitting water soothes her bedraggled thoughts. She finds jasmine bath soap, and courses the liquid through her hair, finally getting rid of the two-day-long tangles and snags.

It's been a few hours –at least if felt like it—and Orihime still hasn't shown up to give Rukia the tour of the hospital that she was so eager to guide. There was definitely something wrong. A complicated puzzle piece. As she scrubs herself with vigor, Rukia wracks her brain for where her nurse would scamper off to, but nothing comes to mind.

Rukia suddenly has the urge to go run outside. She still has an abundance of bottled up energy from the Paraquin drug. So much energy. But she knows she can't leave her room, because she would end up helplessly lost in the labyrinthine hallways. Her toes tap relentless on the edge of the bath. An endless beat-less rhythm.

Where was Orihime? Rukia's neck had started to sting when the soapy water leaked through her bandages. If her nurse were here, then her neck would be bandaged and her tour finished. Rukia huffs with frustration, and clambers out of the tub, sopping wet and shivering as cold air collides with her pale, exposed skin. Her bony knees shake slightly—the after effects of ten year long sleep.

She finds white towels sitting in a linen closet and dries herself quickly. Then she returns to her boudoir and slips on a black t-shirt and leggings that she found in a closet. The last thing she needed in this place was frozen toes, so she throws on two layers of socks as well. She crawls back into her comforting bed for warmth, hugging her knees to her chest and wriggling her toes to get some friction going.

Boredom sets in again as fast as it was delayed. Rukia debates whether or not she should just leave the room, even if she does end up getting lost. Just for something to do.

A static sound erupts from a speaker set in the ceiling. Rukia looks up at it, perplexed. A sudden jolt sends the floor tumbling off its equilibrium. Then, Rukia feels an aching lurch deep in the pit of her stomach as the bed dips under her. She screams and holds on to the edges of the mattress as the black sheets flail above her.

It feels like she's in an airplane that just hit a giant pocket of air, sending the helpless passengers reeling upwards and downwards.

"Orihime!" she cries out desperately. Nobody comes. "Ichigo!"

Nothing.

Rukia is thrown to the side, seemingly in mid-air, and collides with the opposite wall. She's… floating? Rukia's eyes widen as she sees shadows bobbing below her, her toes not touching the ground. And then, with a rapid jolt, gravity seems to be working again and Rukia lands on the floor, hard.

"_Shit!_" Rukia huffs as she hits the ground. The hospital seems to tilt on its axis, sending Rukia into a tumbling roll into the metal wardrobe. Rukia squeals in pain, and hugs her right shoulder which took most of the blow. The bed—a mere six feet away—creaks, and starts sliding towards Rukia's helpless form. It moves faster as the floor tilts farther, and Rukia barely has enough time to lay completely straight and flat before the bed crushes her. Pushing off the wardrobe with her feet, Rukia climbs up the floor. Sheets dangle from the edge of the bed. Rukia grabs for them, and realizes that they are secured to the underside of the mattress, giving her a make-shift rope. She pulls herself upward, and slips out from underneath the bed.

Gravity is lost, again. Rukia starts to float up towards the ceiling. She lurches forward to grab the sheets tighter. They hold, and keep her from colliding with the ceiling. She breathes a sigh of relief, glad to know that she wasn't seriously injured. She looks around the room, accessing the damage.

Rukia squeezes her eyes shut to withhold the images before her. Furniture fluctuating. Water spewing out of the bathroom door in small orbs. Floating.

_Could this be real?_

Unexpectedly, the air rushes out of her lungs as the bed hits the floor with a hard impact, sending her into a sprawling mess of sheets and onto the mattress. There's a splashing sound as all the water droplets hit the floor and soak the gray rug resting on it. The wardrobe is stagnant, but twisted at an odd angle with the wall, and a bedside table lays cracked at the foot of the front door. A static-ridden voice explodes from a speaker in the ceiling. Rukia jumps and looks up at the speaker and listens.

* * *

_"Attention! There has just been an extreme gravity malfunction caused by a fried wire in the system. Please, do not panic, workers are attending to it as we speak. Do not expect this to happen again. If anyone or anything near you is broken or damaged, please contact a Unit G worker. Resume your business."_

* * *

The message repeats itself three more times before it finally crawls back into the speaker. Gravity shift? The voice in the speaker said it would never happen again, but Rukia doesn't trust the voice's judgment. She paces across the room carefully, anxiously, expecting the floor to fall out from under her.

Rukia approaches her bedroom door, and carefully slides the cracked end table away from the entrance. The crack in the table is quite large, but if Rukia doesn't set anything on it, it should be fine. The holographic television is surprisingly unscathed, as is the wardrobe. Rukia winces as she remembers when she crashed into it. She rubs her shoulder.

Her floor is a wet disaster. The water must have seeped out of the bathtub that was still draining. Rukia blinks dumbly at the memory of the water droplets floating midair. She must have been daydreaming. There is no such thing as a gravity shift, not on land.

Unless she's in some kind of contained air capsule? Rukia shrugs off the idea. She was staring to get used to The Crazy around here.

There's a knock on the door that causes Rukia to recoil from the unanticipated sound. Okay, maybe she wasn't used to The Crazy just yet. She cautiously opens the door, which reveals a handsome, dark olive-skinned man with curly hair and humble brown eyes.

It's Chad. He opens his mouth to speak, almost with a robotic undertone, like he was reciting from a notecard. "We experienced a gravity shift, so we're checking each room for—hey wait a minute!" The man squints his eyes to get a good look at Rukia. "Are you the Subject from earlier today?"

Rukia nods. "Yeah. Thanks for almost killing me."

Chad blushes, ashamed. He looks down at the floor, shuffling his feet. "Oh, um. Sorry about that."

Rukia waves at him, "Forget about it. What did you say you were here for?"

"Just to see if everybody in this Living Unit is alright. We've never had a gravity shift _that_ bad before…"

"I see," Rukia runs a hand through her hair. "Why did that happen, exactly?"

"Didn't you here the message?" Chad furrows his brows. "Fired wire in the system."

"Yes, I did hear that, but—"

Chad skips past her upcoming question, nervously, like he didn't want to answer it. "Is everything in your room in order?"

Rukia stops mid-sentence. "Kind of. There's a glass table that cracked, and my floor is soaked but I would really like to know how—"

"Please," Chad begs. "Just forget that it ever happened."

That would be hard to do. Rukia opens her mouth to interrogate the burly man further when he interrupts her, again. He appraises the scratch marks on her neck—the results of clawing herself when she first woke up. "Do you need a bandage?"

"If you wouldn't mind…" Rukia said. Since Orihime hadn't arrived with her new bandages then she guessed she could get treatment from Chad. The man removes backpack from his shoulders and unzips it. He presents Rukia with a gauze and replaces the old bandages after spraying on some antiseptic. "Thank you," Rukia breathes, sighing with relief that the medicine brought her sore appendage.

"You're welcome." Chad zips up the backpack and throws it over one shoulder. "I need to go check on other rooms, now."

"But—"

"Miss, I'm really not authorized to answer your questions." And with that, Chad smiles weakly, trying to placate her, and shuffles away, out of her line of sight.

"Shit…" Rukia complains, and leans against her doorframe. This was the most incorporative hospital she's ever been in. And she's been in a few. Frustrated, Rukia leaves the wet room, discombobulated room and walks down the hallway. She wasn't sure where she was going exactly, but she decided to follow the bee-line of doctors and other Unit workers scampering about the hallways. Rukia gets shoved a couple times, the after-effect of panic and confusion caused by everybody in the building.

She rounds a corner and practically somersaults down a set of stairs that seem to pop up on their own accord. Grabbing hold of a railing, Rukia rights herself. Why do the stairs have to be metal, anyway? Practically everything in this hospital is. The walls. The floors. The stairs. Boring, drab, and down-right ugly. Oh, and hurtful. Don't forget hurtful. Rukia palms her toes, trying to get the feeling back into them after staggering down the stairs in only her double layer of socks.

After spending a few moments regaining her composure, Rukia staggers into a mess hall. It's filled with food and broken plates scattered on every metal surface. The floor is slippery, Rukia can barely hold her footing. Dozens of people are bending over to pick up food scraps strewn about the room, and are audibly cursing under their breath. The food goes in green bags and glass plate bits in neon orange ones. There's a cleared pathway out of the mess hall a few feet to the left so Rukia hops over and walks toward an exit.

"Rukia!"

She midnight-haired girl freezes in her tracks. She knows that high-pitched squeaky voice all-too-well. Orihime forces her way through the mushy floor in her dirty shoes. Rukia was almost mad at her nurse for leaving her in her room to die, but forgives Orihime immediately at the sight her face. Forlorn, hopeless. Rukia can tell by the urgency in her nurse's voice that something is terribly wrong. Orihime's shoes _click-clack_ on the metal floor until she stands at her side.

"I need you to come with me, Rukia. Now." The sad dimness of her eyes is real. This isn't an act. Something has gone horribly wrong. Orihime grabs for Rukia's wrist and pulls her out of the mess hall. She guides her patient through hallway after hallway, seemingly pulling tighter on her wrist with every step.

"Orihime, what's the matter, what's going on?" Rukia raises her eyebrows and tries to break free of her nurse's grasp. She tries to keep up the pace but Orihime is amazingly fast.

"It's Uryu," Orihime sobs. "He's sick."

Oh, so now she cares about her fiancé? She seemed less than interested about him before, especially with Dr. Kurosaki around.

_Dr. Kurosaki!_Rukia had almost forgotten about him. Was he okay? Was he hurt? That "gravity shift" or whatever they call it was pretty intense. She was surprised that she hadn't seen anybody being shipped away on a gurney with irrevocable injures yet.

The incessant pull on her wrist brings Rukia out of her reverie. Orihime does seem truly, truly urgent. Rukia suddenly feels selfish for being mad at Orihime before. Of course Orihime would leave her to be at Uryu's side. That's why she never came to pick her up from her room. We fly up two flights of stairs before Rukia can get a word of apology in.

"I'm sorry for running off, Orihime. You shouldn't be with me right now, you should be with your hus-"

"Fiancé," Orihime says. "And I am going to be with him, I just have to bring you, too."

Rukia realizes that she's never seen Orihime so distraught, and aggravated. "I need to keep an eye on you." She continues and turns a corner before coming to a stop in front of a door marked 3-A1. Third floor, section A, room one. "So would you rather wait out here, or come in?"

Rukia gulps. She never really was good at sympathizing publicly with others. "Whatever makes you more comfortable, Orihime. I don't want to intrude..."

"You won't. Besides, if you're out here I wouldn't really be keeping an eye on you? And you'd probably get bored and run off again."

Rukia casts her eyes downward, embarrassed. She felts like a child being scolded for running out of their mother's sight. Orihime hurriedly scans her finger on a panel by the door and opens it wide. She grasps Rukia's wrist and pulls her in. Rukia steps in quietly while her nurse shuts the door behind them softly, the metal door extracting a barely audible _click._

* * *

The room is all white and very sterile. A typical hospital room. There's an array of gadgets and computers at the foot of a bed. On that bed lays a particularly pale and thin man, dressed in a hospital gown. Rukia tries to read the diagnosis on the computer, but it's too far away. She gasps at the amount of people in the room. A stern, white-haired man is sitting in a chair by Uryu's bed, a purple-haired, exotic beauty leans against a wall at the far corner of the room, accompanied by a funny-looking man with a striped hat. A beautiful, middle-aged woman with light auburn and hair and twinkling eyes leans over Uryu, with her hand clasped in his. A black haired, muscly man of about the same age has an arm draped across her shoulders comfortingly. Rukia notices that the woman looks strangely like Ichigo.

She looks at the other side of the room, and gasps inwardly at the sight of her doctor sitting in a loveseat. Ichigo is alone, with his head in his hands. No one in the room is wearing any kind of uniform, or doctor's coat. They are all casually dressed, except for the white-headed man, who is in gray dress pants and a matching suit. At the sight of Orihime, the pretty auburn-headed woman automatically gives up her place by Uryu's side so Orihime can grasp her fiancé's hand.

"Uryu, can you hear me?"

Uryu is sick. It's written all over his features. His eyes are dim, and other-worldly, as if he's seeing different scenes in his mind rather than what's happening in reality. Dark shadows encircle his eyelids and his face shines with a slick layer of sweat. His breath comes in pants. He grips Orihime's hand and mumbles something in her ear. Orihime nods glumly and strokes his cheek.

Rukia quickly looks away, knowing that she's peeking in on something intimate. She briefly wonders who all these people are, but brushes off the thought as quickly as it came. Because Ichigo is seeming very lonely on that loveseat.

And she wants answers.

Rukia steals a glance in his direction and catches him staring at her with a perplexed emotion. Ichigo sighs, runs a hand through his orange hair, and leans back and pats the open space beside him. Ichigo wants her to sit with him? Well, Rukia won't object. Making the least noise she can, Rukia clambers into the loveseat beside him, keeping a respectable distance. Ichigo doesn't speak.

They stay like this for many moments, before the auburn-haired woman breaks the silence. "I'm going to get coffee. Who wants some?" Everybody raises their hand except for Rukia. She doesn't like coffee. Ichigo's head shifts towards her as he gives an incredulous look.

"I'm not a fan of coffee." Rukia tells him in a voice barely louder than a whisper. He nods his head and leans his chin on his hands, leaning away from Rukia so that she can only see her doctor's profile. It's then, of all things, that Rukia notices she's not wearing a bra or underwear. She feels a deep blush creeping onto her cheeks. She ducks her head and crosses her arms over her measly-but-noticeable chest.

Really, she shouldn't care that she's bra-less in front of her doctor. He probably saw her naked during her testing, anyway. But for some reason, she still felt like she should protect her modesty.

It's then that Uryu starts to cough. Orihime jumps up and lifts him into a sitting position. Blood is beginning to pool around the corner of Uryu's mouth. And then everybody sprints into action.

The white-haired man is the first to action. "Ichigo, go get a nurse. We need some Pholozin."

"Of course." Ichigo is out the door before Rukia has the chance to watch him leave. The white haired man tests Uryu's pulse while Orihime wipes off his mouth with a handkerchief. It comes back red. Orihime starts sobbing into his shirt. Rukia feels sick to her stomach. She shouldn't be here. This is a private affair. She gets up, and walks out of the door. No one notices her absence. Rukia decides that she'll just catch up with Ichigo so that he can take her back to her room.

She sees Ichigo walking very fast in her direction, Neliel in tow. Rukia glares at her as she passes but Neliel just ignores her. She's too busy staring at Ichigo's ass. Rukia is tempted to let her foot out and make Neliel fall on her makeup-smeared face of hers but she's too late and Neliel has disappeared through the door. Ichigo doesn't follow her. Instead, he stares at the door with a burdened look on his face.

He leans against the wall, looking defeated before he finally slumps to the ground in a sitting position. Rukia walks toward him, tentatively. "Anything I can do?" There must be something she's good for.

"No, Subject." He says curtly. The comment stings, and Rukia turns to leave before Ichigo grasps her hand. "I'm sorry." He pleads.

Rukia's thin eyebrow's raise. "Excuse me?"

"I shouldn't call you that." He says. "Sorry." He doesn't look her in the eyes. "Will you just—will you sit with me?"

That's a surprise. She folds her legs to sit beside him. It's not the most comfortable place what with the metal floor but she doesn't care. She almost wraps an arm around him comfortingly, but thinks better of it. He doesn't say anything for roughly ten minutes before he finally speaks.

"Uryu is my parents' godchild. He's like a brother to me." He sets his head in his hands and runs his fingers through his hair repeatedly. Silence, again.

When he finally speaks his velvet voice is rough and cracked. "Seeing Uryu like that..." He shakes his head and closes his eyes for a moment before releasing them. "And then knowing I can't do anything to help..." His slams his hands down on the floor and it creates a sharp _pang_that reverberates across the hall. Some passersby give him an annoyed look. Rukia flinches at the sudden noise and recoils away from Ichigo before recovering herself and scooting over closer, trying to comfort a man she barely knew.

"It just _aggravates _me."

Rukia knows how he's feeling. Helpless and hopeless and on the verge of being out of control. This time, she does drape an arm over his shoulders. He looks up at her, quizzically.

"You are a mystery, Miss Rukia."

What is it about his man that sends Rukia's blood boiling? His amber eyes search hers. She wants to take advantage of his vulnerable state to squeeze some answers—about the hospital, the gravity shift, everything—out of him, but the expression on his face holds her at bay. She can't take advantage of him like that, she just couldn't.

"I shouldn't be bothering you. I'll go back to my room." She unfolds herself from the ground and winces as her knees crack. Her Paraquin energy has depleted extremely and she feels sleepy. Plus Ichigo's strange and confusing attitudes towards her has sent her thoughts down a rollercoaster of unpredictability. She needs to sort them out.

"Which way to my room?" Rukia asks. After a pained pause—as if he was contemplating whether or not to let her go—he points down the hallway to her right.

"Go down that hallway, then down the two sets of stairs at the end of the hall, turn left, keep walking until you get to Section 7. I think you can take it from there."

Okay, those directions are easy enough. Rukia nods, and he nods also, silently bidding her adieu.

Rukia follows Ichigo's instructions and walks down the hall, throwing a glance over her shoulders as she did so. He's staring straight at her. She turns her head abruptly and disappears downstairs.

Amazingly, Rukia makes it to her room without getting lost. Her feet make squelching noises on the wet rug as she walks in, so she rolls it up and prop it against a wall. Unit G hasn't gotten around to cleaning her room up just yet. The floor is still damp but Rukia ignores it. It will dry eventually.

Rukia is feeling tired and it scares her. What scares Rukia more is the electric feeling she has whenever she's around Dr. Kurosaki. Like some force is pulling her toward him however hard she struggles to resist.

She makes her bed and redoes it until there isn't a crease or wrinkle to be spotted. Then she rearranges the furniture half a dozen times until they're back in their original place. There is not one thing to do in this room besides watch television, and Rukia notices that every channel on the T.V. has reruns nonstop.

Rukia would find that weird and annoying, but the channels on her television are not on top of her list of priorities at the moment. The first priority is finding out what caused the strange gravity shift earlier, and the second is dealing with Ichigo. Or maybe that should be first.

Rukia flops down on her bed and stares at the ceiling.

_Dammit, Ichigo_. She thinks. _What are you doing to me?_

* * *

_End of Chapter Four._

* * *

**A/N: Review my children, review! I want to know if you guys like this new story or whatever.**


	5. Chapter 5: Lights Out

_The Subject: C21-0_

* * *

**Chapter Five: Lights Out**

* * *

"_It's hard to be a bright light in a dim world." _

_-Gary Starta_

* * *

_The first priority is finding out what caused the strange gravity shift earlier, and the second is dealing with Ichigo. Or maybe that should be first._

_Rukia flops down on her bed and stares at the ceiling._

Dammit, Ichigo._ She thinks. _What are you doing to me?

* * *

Even though Rukia is exhausted, she can't bring herself to fall asleep. The fact that she's practically a prisoner here doesn't help, either. Her eyes scan the room, searching for hidden cameras—or something. She rises from her bed, and inspects her wardrobe. Just clothes and socks and sensible black shoes. No cameras. She checks the glass end table, under the bed, and even the faucets in her bathroom. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

Rukia, with a new determination, throws on the shoes she found in her closet and pads out of the room into the hallway. There are still hundreds of people buzzing around, picking up random, broken items, or gossiping with co-workers about the recent "gravity shift".

"Excuse me," Rukia approaches a woman dressed in the standard doctor's coat and black underclothes. The woman turns and raises an eyebrow towards Rukia questioningly. "I was wondering—what caused the um—" Rukia stutters over her words. The voice on the intercom had said that it was a gravity malfunction, but how could that be possible? "The… _gravity shift_?"

The woman in question rolls her eyes. "They said it on the intercom three times, didn't you hear? Fried wire turned it off."

"Turned what off?"

"The gravity?" The woman says sarcastically. But at least the woman was giving Rukia some type of answer. The woman must not have known, from Rukia's lack of a nametag and state of disarray, that she is a Subject. That's what they call her, anyway.

"Yes, I know that. But—"

The woman waved her off, and started talking with one of her co-workers, completely ignoring her. Rukia glared at the back of her strawberry blonde head, imagining that she was burning a hole through it with her eyes. She bravely tapped the woman's shoulder, hard. The woman twisted around with a look of disgust on her face.

"Seriously?" she asked, incredulous. "Go away."

Rukia glares at the woman, with more ferocity than before. The woman doesn't back down under her gaze though, and turns back around to chat with her friend. Rukia sighs, and turns on her heel and leaves.

_Stupid, fucking, prissy-ass… _She thinks. Rukia continues to call the woman mean obscenities in her head while she makes her way down a narrow hallway, pushing past many people in long white coats. She wanders for what seems like hours before she spots a small brunette girl hefting a cart full of metal buckets. Rukia takes a step closer to look, and realizes that the buckets are full of heavy glass shards. The cart looks heavy and the girl pulling it is struggling.

"Need any help?" Rukia steps in front of the cart. She wanted to help, partly because the girl looked immensely frustrated, but mostly because Rukia was dying of boredom, and hefting heavy buckets sounded more entertaining than staring into space for hours.

"Oh, um, no I got it." Her eyes dart to Rukia's, quickly and then away, and sniffs. Is she sick? Rukia's widen in horror at the thought that Uryu's sickness could be spreading_. No, don't think about that. You're ridiculous. She probably just has a cold, or something._

"Please, I want to help. I have nothing to do."

"Er, well... okay. If you put it that way..." She moves to the side to make room for the midnight-haired girl. Rukia gives the brunette a small smile and grabs hold of the cart. They duo starts hefting the cart up the stairs. Rukia lets the other girl steer mostly, and she's breaks the silence first.

"I'm Yuzu, by the way."

"Rukia."

"It's really nice of you to do this. Really. Thanks," Yuzu steers the cart around a corner and they enter a large room. Rukia has to resist the urge to cover her ears as she's bombarded by loud shrieking and grinding sounds. The metal floor slightly vibrates.

"You're welcome!" She yells over the noise. Yuzu nods, and starts to dump the bucket contents into a large grinder in the middle of the floor. Rukia's eyes widen. It's huge! If somebody fell in there... She shivers, but follows suit and grabs a larger bucket in both hands. She walks toward the grinder before coming to a halt. The grinder is basically a huge, circular hole, dominated by enormous turbines that eat up whatever is put inside. Yuzu dumps the glass contents of her buckets into the grinder and the shards slide down into the turbine. The turbine snacks on the glass shards hungrily and an ear-splitting noise chokes the air. Rukia drops the bucket immediately to cover her ears.

"Sorry!" Yuzu shouts, her voice barely audible. "It takes some getting used to!"

Rukia chuckles, and bends down to pick up the bucket and dump it into the grinder. She doesn't flinch this time, she was expecting the sound.

"I just can't believe how much of a mess that gravity shift caused…" Yuzu complained. "My group was assigned to get rid of _all_ the broken glass. There's only like, four of us working on it. It's going to take forever."

Rukia's ears perked up at the mention of the gravity shift. Maybe this Yuzu girl would be more willing to tell her what's going on. But she had to play it cool. Yuzu hadn't seemed to realize that she was a "Subject", yet. If Yuzu found out, she might not be willing to give up any information.

"Yeah, that was some gravity shift…"

"Totally." Yuzu responds as she dumps the last of the glass into the grinder. She wipes her hands on her blue jeans. "Well, that's the last of it."

"So how long have these shifts been happening?" Rukia interrupts.

Yuzu raised an eyebrow at her, as if to say, _you don't know?_ "Ever since I've been here."

"Really? How long has that been?"

Yuzu gave her an incredulous look. "A long time, I guess."

"How long? Since when?"

A pause. "Birth."

Rukia blinks. Since _birth_? As in her _entire life_?

"Are you some kind of hostage or something?" Rukia asks boldly. Maybe Yuzu was a Subject, too!

"Um, no, I live here, just like everybody else. What's with all these weird questions?"

Oh shit. Play it cool. Play it cool.

"Ah, I'm just kidding. Ha," Rukia lies pretty unsuccessfully. "I, um,"

"You know, I haven't seen you around here. Then again, this place is huge, but still… I haven't seen you before."

Rukia gulped. "I'm sure we've passed each other in the hallway before. I-I know we have."

"Uh-huh," Yuzu sniffs again, and wipes her nose on her sleeve. She coughs minutely before she grabs hold of the now-empty cart and exits the room. Rukia follows.

"You don't really belong here, do you?" Yuzu asks conspicuously as they walk down the hallway together. Rukia remains silent. "You're a Subject aren't you?"

Rukia gulps. Shit. "No."

"Yes you are! I'm sure of it!" Yuzu claps her hands together. "How cool!"

…_cool?_

"What?" Rukia asks, somewhat dumbly.

"I've been waiting for so long for one of you guys to wake up! I find you Subjects fascinating… to do that to yourself… I've always wondered how somebody could do something like that…"

"Excuse me?" Rukia asked angrily.

"Don't be mad! I'm just curious! How did you kill—"

A sudden jolt sends both girls backward, arms thrashing, throats convulsing and screaming. They hit a metal wall hard. Then they land on their asses on the cold floor.

"Holy shi—"

The ground dips underneath them, turning at a ninety degree angle. The two girls are still against the wall. They're so angled that the wall could almost be the floor. The cart suddenly smashes just to the left of Yuzu, missing her by inches. One of the empty buckets falls off and lands on her head, and the sight would be comical, if Rukia wasn't so terrified. A metal filing cabinet starts sliding, slowly, tortuously slowly towards them.

"Common!" Rukia shouts, and grasps Yuzu's arm. She still had the bucket on her head. Rukia leaned against the wall, moving slowly but surely. She manages to pull her and Yuzu a few feet away. Then the cabinet gained momentum and crashed right where Rukia's head would have been. She lets out a sigh of relief when nothing heavy seems to be moving towards them at the moment. Yuzu had started to cry, her sobbing noises echoing inside her bucket-helmet.

"Hey," Rukia takes the bucket off her head and tosses it aside. "Don't cry."

Just as she says those comforting words, the ground slides back to its position at a lovely 180-degree angle, the way things should be. Both girls breathe a sigh of relief, and Yuzu wipes her eyes.

"_Hit a minor 4:t-50. No need to panic. We have navigated away from the upcoming asteroid field. Contact a Unit G worker for any possible injuries or broken items. Continue your business."_

The message only repeats once.

"Asteroid field." Rukia's whole body seems to grow cold. That is _impossible_. She lived on planet earth, and never planned to leave it matter-of-factly. She was safe on the ground. The gravity shift was just some freaky experiment. That's why she's here right? Because she's a fucking experiment. _It couldn't be true._

But she had to be sure.

"Yuzu, why does the ground keep moving? Why do things float when they're not supposed to?" Rukia asks, both her body and voice numb as her words tumble out of her like rain from clouds. "Why do they keep mentioning gravity shifts, and why have you been here since you were born? Why aren't there any _windows_?"

Yuzu stutters over her words, before saying, "What?"

"_Why aren't there any windows in this place_?"

"Well, we do have some windows, but not much." Yuzu says meekly.

"Why." The way Rukia says this, curtly, with no emotion, makes it seem more like a statement than a question.

"To avoid as many oxygen leaks as possible, Rukia. Why do you keep asking all these dumb questions? Didn't anyone tell you?"

"Oxygen leaks?" Rukia hisses, incredulous. Holy shit. "Is this a joke?!"

Yuzu seems confused. "Are you trying to be funny?"

"No!" It takes Rukia all of her might not to just wring the answers out of this girl.

"So you don't remember _anything_?"

"No, I don't remember anything!" Rukia is so frustrated. Why can't she remember coming here? She can feel her eyes prick with tears. She cries when she's mad. She hates crying when she's mad.

"Rukia, this is the C21-0. It's a spaceship. I've been living here all my life because I was born here. I haven't been able to leave."

Rukia knees shake. She has to grip the wall beside her for support. She leans her head against the metal wall, the cold unforgiving hardness of it against her skin keeps her from passing out. What Yuzu has just told Rukia drags her into the light of discovery. The high-tech that wouldn't be used in normal hospitals. The lack of windows. Strange garbage disposal. That weird Paraquin drug that can keep you awake for days on end. With our without will, Rukia is all but melded into the C21-0, with no chance of escape.

"Are you okay, Rukia?" the young girl sets a warm hand on her shaking shoulder. "You look really pale. I should take you to your doctor. Who was assigned to you?"

"Dr. Ichigo Kurosaki." Rukia mumbles. She shuts her eyes closed. This couldn't be happening. This _could not be happening._

"Ichigo? He's my brother," Yuzu says. "I know where he is. I can take you to him right away."

_Small world._ Rukia thinks. Then again, they're all trapped inside this so-called spaceship, seemingly for a very long time. She wouldn't be surprised if most of the people were related in some way.

"Okay," Rukia replies. She feels numb, so numb, like her body is going to shut down to block out the pain. Yuzu tugs on her hand, leaving the cart behind, and leads her down the hallway. Rukia follows her without a word. She is too shocked to speak.

"So, from your state of shock, I'm guessing that nobody has told you why you're here?"

Rukia shrugs. Her movement feels mechanical, like they don't belong to her.

"You know that we are using you, er, the Subject's bodies for medical testing, right? For that drug, Anahgyokumanin?"

Rukia shrugs.

"Do you remember how you got here? Do you remember what you did?"

Rukia shakes her head no.

"Oh," Yuzu's cheeks flush red as she turns a corner. They bypass several people that give Rukia unfriendly, apprehensive looks. "That's unfortunate."

"Do you know how I got here?" Rukia asks, her mouth finally able to work itself.

Yuzu fumbles. "Uh, well, it really is a touchy topic. You should ask Ichigo. It, um, it isn't my place to tell you…"

Rukia glares at her and furrows her eyebrows, but Yuzu wasn't paying attention. The young girl had finally flagged down her brother, who was talking to a short, silver-haired man with slitted eyes. Rukia recognized him. He was there went she first woke up, in that box that she thought was a coffin.

"Ichigo!" Yuzu squeals.

He turns around. "Hey Yu—" he's knocked aback slightly by a pouncing Yuzu giving him a hug. She releases him, quickly, and gestures to Rukia.

"Rukia kind of just found out that the C21-0 is, you know, a spaceship."

Ichigo scowls, "Oh."

"Yeah," Yuzu throws an empathetic look over her shoulder, to where Rukia was standing a few feet away. "She doesn't seem to be doing so good. I thought you could help her, and maybe… you could tell her…" she whispers something in Ichigo's ear. His eyes widen, but he nods. "She deserves to know."

"Yes, I suppose she does." Ichigo's amber eyes meet Rukia's violet ones. He doesn't look away. In fact, after a few moments, Rukia felt uncomfortable under his heated gaze and looked down at the floor, a slight blush painting her cheeks. He really was beautiful. "Thank you for bringing her to me, Yuzu, I can take it from here."

Yuzu nods, and jumps on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. "Will I see you at dinner?"

"Probably not, Yuzu."

Yuzu pouts, gives him a final hug and leaves the room, waving goodbye to Rukia as she did so.

Ichigo appraises Rukia. She was a bit of a mess. Her hair was a slightly chaotic, and Ichigo had to push back a few thoughts on how cute it looked framing her face. Her knees were shaking, and, although Ichigo knew she would never admit it, there was fear embedded in her violet eyes.

"Come," Ichigo waved her over. "It's time that you knew."

Rukia walks toward him, and Ichigo sets his hand against the small of her back to lead her away.

* * *

Dr. Kurosaki's office was nice. The walls were black metal, the usual, but he had dark wooden floors and plush, red leather chairs. He sat in one, and Rukia sat in the other, facing him. She put her hands in her lap nervously.

"Are you alright?" he asked. Rukia could have been imagining it, but there seemed to be a look of concern in his eyes.

"I'm fine." Rukia lied.

"I could prescribe something for you." He pestered.

"No, I'm fine."

"No, really, I could—"

"_I said I'm fine_! No more drugs." She said hotly.

Ichigo scowled, pissed that he was being interrupted and talked down to. "Fine, whatever." They sat in lurid silence for many minutes. Rukia crossed her arms and stared at the wall behind him, refusing to look at him. Ichigo sighed deeply, and Rukia could feel his eyes burning holes in her left temple as she glared at a scratch in the midnight metal wall. Rukia's ears picked up the sound of Ichigo crossing his arms, releasing, and then re-crossing them many times as he got his moodiness under control.

Then, out of nowhere, Ichigo spoke.

"Years ago, life on earth was... peaceful. Tranquil. Like you just had a warm bath. Then new inventions arrived. Everybody wanted them. Consumerism was common. Everybody seemed smarter, but not as friendly. You're unmoving in body and mind, but still running forward at blinding speeds, demanding new technology, knowledge, and above all, power." He pauses. Rukia doesn't offer up any insight, so he continues. "Almost everybody was greedy. They wanted so much even when they had already received enough. But, this greed stands alone compared to devastation the star created."

Another pause.

"Keep going." Rukia urged him. She was getting small flashes of what had happened crossing her mind. But she wanted to hear it from him.

"An old star, ten times the size of Mars, exploded near our solar system. The blast managed to clip the edge of earth's moon, sending it spiraling down to earth at a dangerous proximity. Now, as we all know- the moon creates the ocean's waves. With the moon so close to earth, the waves doubled, tripled, quadrupled until they overcame us. Entire countries were submerged in water, and people scattered higher into the mountains to escape it and breathe oxygen—which soon became a precious resource. Crops and pasture animals drowned, and finally choked the life out of us. Disease spread like wildfire to a parched forest. That's when it got really ugly."

Ichigo's words struck a nerve in Rukia's brain. Her memories were muddled, but she tried to remember. This is her mind. She will conquer it. Even if the memories hurt like a thousand knifes stabbing into her brain. She remembered the panic, all the dead animals, and people.

They had mass burials, then.

Rukia couldn't quite remember who, but she knew that somebody close to her had died. The cause of death was uncertain. No, wait—it was one of the diseases that unleashed itself across the world, murdering many with icy fingers. It was slow, painful, and you're awake through it all. A silent tear rolls down Rukia's cheek as she grieves for the person she hadn't remembered she lost.

"What's the year?" Rukia asks solemnly.

"2047." Ichigo palms the back of his neck. He didn't seem to be comfortable giving Rukia all this information. But then again, it was her body, her life, and she needed to know.

"God," Rukia croaks. Her loved one had died in 2035, she remembered that much. They had bothered to make a grave, and she could remember the writing on the stone. "I really have been sleeping for ten years, haven't I?"

Ichigo nods. He gets up from his chair and pads over to Rukia. She has wrapped her arms around her legs, staring off into space. She looked so small. So scared. He knelt down in front of her.

"Hey," he swipes a stray band of hair away from her eyes. Even though he had told himself over and over that he would never get attached to a Subject again, he found himself comforting her. "Mourning about your past life won't fix anything. You're here now. You're safe."

She glances into his eyes. "How can you be sure? This place is falling apart. Don't think I don't know—these gravity shifts should not be happening."

"This ship is old." Ichigo agrees with her. "But it's all we got. All we can do is hope for the best."

Rukia mulls over his words. "I remember how bad the world was when I left it. People were dying every day. We're on the C21-0 because earth is inhabitable, aren't we?" Rukia asks.

"Yes."

"How did I get here, Ichigo? What did I do?" She grasps his rough, calluoused hand, but it was warm. Comforting. Ichigo looks down at where she had touched him, and his adam's apple bobbed.

Just then, the door to Ichigo's office swings open loudly to reveal Dr. Kurosaki, his father. He looks very tired. Dark circles under his eyes. His hair in utter disarray from running his hands through it so much. His thumb and forefinger pinch the bridge of his nose in aggravation. The eyes in his skull are dull, not bright and full of life like they usually are. He accesses Ichigo, who was still kneeling before a rather frazzled Rukia. He furrows his brows at the spectacle before speaking.

"Son."

"Dad," Ichigo mouths. "What are you doing here?"

"Uryu has gotten worse."

All the blood drains from Ichigo's face as he runs a worried hand through his orange locks. "Shit…" he mutters under his breath.

"I would appreciate if you came with me to see him." Ichigo's father said sternly.

"Yes, of course." Ichigo rises into a standing position. He glances at Rukia. "I can't leave this one by herself. She gets into too much trouble, and she is practically an emotional wreck right now."

Rukia would have made a quip at him over that comment, but she just couldn't bring herself to. Plus, he was right. She could barely function.

"She may come as well, if she must. Now please," Ichigo's father gestures out the door. "We should go."

Ichigo quickly clutches Rukia's elbow and pulls her up from the chair. He hurriedly escorts her out of the room, the other Dr. Kurosaki shutting the door behind them securely.

* * *

The trio made their way through the halls in silence. The other passengers of the C21-0 pushed past them in haste, not bothering to mumble apologies. Rukia could sense a worried aura about them. She wondered whether or not the effects of the drug, Anahygo-whatever, it was _way_ too long to remember, had changed her yet. Her eyesight did seem a bit sharper than it used to be—and she could hear people talking on the floor below them if she listened hard enough. She was about to ask Ichigo about these strange happenings, but the fluorescent lights started to flicker above and they distracted her.

"Fuck—" The older Dr. Kurosaki mutters, before the lights went out completely. There were a few startled screams heard in the distance.

"Rukia—where are you?" Ichigo called for her. Rukia's eyes started to adjust to the darkness, and she could make out Ichigo's silhouette. His hand was reaching behind him, searching for her, as his head swiveled back and forth. "Shit, I can't see anything…"

"I'm here," Rukia touched his wrist. He jumped slightly at the contact, but was silent. "You really can't see anything?"

"No, it's pitch black!" Ichigo mutters angrily.

"I can see you," Rukia says, "Just your outline."

"But it's too dark—" Ichigo starts to protest.

"The drug must be taking effect, my son." Dr. Kurosaki says matter-of-factly. "You must remember that her senses will become greater than our own."

Rukia watches Ichigo gulp and scratch the back of his neck, embarrassed. "I knew that…"

The older of the Kurosaki's just grunts in response.

"Is Uryu's room much farther?" Rukia questions. "If it's not too far away, I think I can lead us all there."

"Good idea, Subject," the older man says. Rukia scowls at the derogatory term, but brushes it off. "His room should be just to the end of this hall, around the corner. First door on the right."

"Okay," Rukia reaches to grasp Ichigo's hand. It's as warm as she remembered. Then Ichigo's father grabs his other hand. Ichigo feels very much like a pathetic, little child as he allows his patient to lead them down the pathway. Rukia is careful not to lead the two men into a wall, or any of the expensive equipment lying around. They arrive at Uryu's door, or at least what Rukia hopes is his door. The lights above start to flicker and come to life, but only for a moment.

"Ah, this is his room! Great work, Subject." The older Kurosaki smiles and pats Rukia's head. She shoves his hand away and frowns. Ichigo is the one to open the door.

"Hey," Ichigo says as he strides through the doorway. The people in the room—Orihime, Chad, Uryu's father, and the beautiful woman who Rukia thinks is Ichigo's mother—are bathed in an eerie green light. The color is caused by green glowsticks they all hold in their hands. Emergency light. The new shadows the lights create on their faces give them dogged, haphazard, and worried appearances. Or maybe they were just more worried for Uryu's health than before. The sick man in question was lying on a cot, covered in a slick sheet of sweat, coughing sporadically.

Every soul in the room is dead-silent. Not one word is spoken. They all hold their breath, anticipating something. Ichigo sighs and walks over to his mother, who hands him a few extra glow sticks, which he hands to both Rukia and his father.

"Thanks," Rukia says as she takes it from him. He nods glumly, and goes to sit on the loveseat set in the corner of the room. The midnight-headed girl follows him, and sits on the opposite end of the upholstery. She steals glances at Ichigo, and catches him giving sideways looks right back. She blushes, and twiddles her thumbs as the tense silence continues. Hours seems to pass before Uryu has an erratic coughing fit that sounds worse than ever before. Blood dribbles down the side of his mouth. Orihime sniffs away tears and dabs his chin with a handkerchief. The cloth is soon dowsed in maroon, begging for more. The older Dr. Kurosaki sprints over and takes out his white hand-held and scans Uryu's head to read his temperature. He stares at the results for a while, and shakes his head sadly. "His fever won't break. And his life support machine can't go on for much longer without power." He looks up towards the lights, almost begging them to turn on.

Then, finally, _finally_, the lights up ahead start to flicker and sputter out, only to come back again, like strobe likes. All heads snap up in its direction, their breath hitching. The lights flash for what seems like an eternity, before they are smoothed over into a constant flow. The room is brought to life again as everybody visibly relaxes. Every chest in the room breathes a sigh of relief.

"How long was the power out?" Orihime asks. She's concerned over how much back-up energy the life-support machine will have if the power decides to blow out.

"Not sure," Ichigo mumbles. He checks his hand-held. "Two hours? Maybe three."

Orihime's eyes widen. Uryu's father looks at the ground as a way of distraction, obviously lost in anxious, poorly-hidden thought.

"The power," Dr. Kurosaki clears his throat dryly before he can continue, "was out longer than we thought." He casts a nervous glance at his godson, who is now conscious. Uryu tries to speak, tries to comfort Orihime, but can't. He just slides a shaky hand to meet hers and squeezes. Dr. Kurosaki continues to talk. "All the emergency power we have was most likely used up on the other Subjects, to keep the sleep units going... which means—"

Ichigo interrupts his father, cutting him off in a cold, almost robotic voice. "If the power goes out again, Uryu's life support will fail."

Rukia looks at the strange machine hooked into Uryu with new eyes. That machine there is his lifeline. Rukia studies Uryu, searching for answers. His condition seemed familiar. Too familiar. She gasps, her intake of breath causing Ichigo to swivel his head towards her with concern. The disease. The very one that took her loved one with icy fingers, the one that prodded and crushed her chest to squeeze the life out of anybody it laid it's claws in. Steal their heartbeats. Uryu had the sickness that murdered millions of people on Earth.

_But how could he catch it?_ Rukia asks herself. _How could Uryu get a disease that everybody on this ship escaped from ten years ago? _

The answers weren't there. Rukia stares into Ichigo's amber eyes with horror. The disease was spreadable. It was in the very air.

People outside of the room start to cheer as the lights brighten outside as well. They all seem so happy. So relieved. If only they knew somebody's life was connected to those very lights, if they knew of the disease that could break out and kill them all…

Rukia doesn't think they would be cheering.

* * *

_End of Chapter Five_

* * *

**A/N: Hey, guys! No, I'm not dead. Sorry about the lack of updates. The last few months of the year 2012 have been complete hell. My best friend almost died in the hospital, and I had to put my dog (I've had her for eleven years) down yesterday. So I'm sorry for the lack of updates on all of my fics. Just please be patient.**

**And, as always, please review! They would really brighten up my new year. **

**Have a lovely day,**

**Liym. **


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